Targeting Degradome Genes via Engineered Viral Vectors

Abstract

Members of the degradome play an important role at different levels in carcinogenesis, tumor progression, invasion, and metastasis. Therefore, they are attractive targets for therapeutic intervention in cancer. Accordingly, wild-type or modified genes coding for different inhibitory molecules targeted at different levels of protease expression and activity have been extensively studied in experimental models of cancer using engineered viral vectors for gene delivery. These preclinical studies have served as an important and efficient way of target validation and proved the feasibility of the concept of protease targeting in cancer therapy. In this chapter, we discuss the application of different viral gene delivery vectors for targeting expression and function of the extracellular matrix degrading proteases.